Authors: Robert Harris
Viktor idly swung his foot off the banquette and stood, hitching up his trousers. He removed his knife from
He was all false smiles and apologies: so sorry if Kelso had been inconvenienced in any way, such a pity they had not been able to meet much earlier in the journey, but he had had other, more pressing matters to attend to. He was sure that Kelso understood.
His overcoat was unbuttoned. His face was sheened with sweat. He tossed his hat on to the banquette opposite Kelso and sat down next to it, grabbing the satchel, removing the documents, gesturing to Viktor to take the seat next to Kelso, calling to the second bodyguard he had left in the corridor to close the door and not to let anyone in.
This was not the Mamantov Kelso had met seven years ago
on his release from prison. This was not even the Mamantov from earlier in the week. This was Mamantov in his prime again. Mamantov rejuvenated. Mamantov redux.
Kelso watched him as his thick fingers checked through the notebook and the NKVD reports.
'Good,' he said, briskly, 'excellent. Everything is here, I think. Tell me: were you really were planning to destroy all this?'
'Yes.'
All of it?'
'Yes.'
He looked at Kelso in wonderment and shook his head.
'And yet you are the one who is always bleating about the need to open every historical document for inspection!'
'Even so, I'd still have destroyed it. In the interests of stopping you.
Kelso felt the increasing pressure of Viktor's elbow in his ribs, and he knew that the young man was longing for an opportunity to hurt him.
Ah! So history is only to be permitted where it suits the subjective interests of those who hold the records?' Mamantov smiled again. 'Has the myth of so-called western "objectivity" ever been more completely exposed? I can see I shall have to take these documents back into my possession for safe-keeping.'
'Take them back?' said Kelso. He couldn't keep the incredulity out of his voi~e-'You mean you had them before?'
Mamantov inclined his head graciously. Indeed.
MAMANTOV had replaced the papers in the satchel and had fastened the straps. But he couldn't quite bring himself to
leave. Not yet. After all, he had waited so long for this moment. He wanted Kelso know. It was fifteen years since Yepishev had first told him about this 'black oilskin notebook' and he had never lost faith that one day he would find it. And then, like a miracle, in the very darkest hours of the cause, who should turn up on the membership lists of Aurora but the very same Papu Rapava whose name had cropped up so often in the KG B's files? Mamantov had summoned him. And at long last - hesitantly, reluctantly at first, but eventually out of loyalty to his new chief - Rapava had told him the story of the night of Stalin's stroke.
Mamantov had been the first to hear it.
That had been a year ago.
It had taken him a whole nine months to get into the garden of Beria's mansion on Vspolnyi Street. And do you know what he had had to do? No? He had had to set up a property company - Moskprop - and buy the goddamn place off its owners, the former KGB, although that hadn't been too hard because Mamantov had plenty of friends at the Lubyanka who, in return for a percentage, were happy to sell state assets for a fraction of their true value. Some might call it corruption, or even robbery. He preferred the western term: privatisation.
The Tunisians had been kicked out, finally, under the terms of their lease, in August, and Rapava had led him to the exact spot in the garden. The toolbox had been retrieved. Mamantov had read the notebook, had flown to Archangel, had followed exactly the same trail as Kelso and O'Brian into the heart of the forest. And he had seen the potential at once. But he also had the sense - the genius, he would almost call it, but he would leave that judgement to others - the wit, let's say, to recognise what Kelso had just so aptly proved: that
history, in the end, is a matter of subjectivity not objectivity.
'Suppose I had returned to Moscow with our mutual friend, convened a press conference and announced he was Stalin's son. What would have happened? I'll tell you. Nothing. I would have been ignored. Derided. Accused of forgery. And why?' He jabbed his finger at Kelso. 'Because the media is in the grip of cosmopolitan forces that loathe Vladimir Mamantov and all he stands for. Oh, but if Dr Kelso, the darling of the cosmopolitans - ah, yes, if Kelso says to the world, "Behold, I give you Stalin's son," then that is a different matter.
So the son had been prevailed upon to wait a few weeks longer, until some other strangers would appear bearing the notebook.
(And that explained a lot, thought Kelso: the odd sense he had experienced in Archangel that people had been somehow waiting for them - the communist official, Vavara Safanova, the man himself. 'You are the ones, you are truly the ones; and lam the one you seek.. .')
'And why me?' he asked.
'Because I remembered you. Remembered you wheedling your way in to see me when I was fresh from Lefortovo after the coup - your fucking arrogance, your certainty that you and your kind had won and I was finished. The shit you wrote about me. . . What was it Stalin said? "To choose one's victims, to prepare one's plans minutely, to s
t
a
ke an implacable vengeance, 'good tha
n to go to bed ... there is nothing sweeter in the world." Sweet. That's it. Nothing sweeter in the world.'
ZINAIDA Rapava arrived at Moscow's Yaroslavl Station a few minutes after four o'clock. (What
exactly she had been doing
in the three hours since leaving Robotnik the authorities were never able to determine, although there were unconfirmed reports of a woman matching her description being seen at the Troekurovo cemetery, where her mother and brother were buried.)
At any rate, at five past four, she approached an employee of the Russian railway network. Afterwards he couldn't say why she stuck in his mind when so many others were milling around that day: perhaps it was the dark glasses she was wearing, despite the perpetual sunken gloom beneath the hooded arches of the railway terminus.
Like the rest, she wanted to know which platform the Archangel train would be arriving at.
The crowds were already beginning to build, and Aurora stewards were doing their best to keep them in order. A gangway had been roped off A platform had been erected for the cameras. Flags were being distributed - the Tsarist eagle, the hammer and sickle, the Aurora emblem. Zinaida took a little red flag, and maybe it was that, or maybe it was the leather jacket that made her look like a typical Aurora activist, but whatever it was she secured a prime position, at the edge of the rope, and nobody bothered her.
She can be glimpsed, occasionally, on some of the videotape of the crowd, taken before the train arrived - cool, solitary, waiting.
THE train was trundling past the suburban stations. Curious Saturday afternoon shoppers looked to see what all the fuss was about. A man held up a child to wave but Mamantov was too busy talking to notice.
He was describing the way he had lured Kelso to Russia -and that, he said, was the touch he was proudest of: that was
a ruse worthy of Josef Vissarionovich himself.
He had arranged for a front company he owned in Switzerland - respectable, a family firm: it had been exploiting the workers for centuries - to contact Rosarkhiv and offer to sponsor a symposium on the opening up of the Soviet archives!
Mamantov slapped his own knee with mirth.
At first, Rosarkhiv hadn't wanted to invite Kelso - imagine that! they thought he was no longer of 'sufficient standing in the academic community' - but Mamantov, through the sponsors, had insisted, and two months later, sure enough, there he was, back in town, in his free hotel room, all expenses paid, like a pig in shit, come to wallow in our past, feeling superior to us, telling us to feel guilty, when all the time the only reason he was there was to bring the past back to life!
And Papu Rapava, asked Kelso, what had he thought of this plan?
For the first time, Mamantov's face darkened.
Rapava had claimed to like the plan. That was what he'd said. To spit in the capitalists' soup and then to watch them drink it? Oh yes please, comrade colonel: that had appealed to Rapava very much! He was supposed to tell Kelso his story overnight, then take him directly to Beria's old mansion, where they would retrieve the toolbox together. Mamantov had tipped off O'Brian who promised to turn up with his cameras at the Institu~e of Marxism-Leninism the next morning. The symposium was to provide the perfect launch pad. What a story! There would have been a feeding frenzy. Mamantov had the whole thing worked out.
But then: nothing. Kelso had called the following afternoon and that was when Mamantov had learned that
Rapava had failed in his mission: that he had told his story right enough, but then had run away.
'Why?' Mamantov frowned. 'You mentioned money to him, presumably?'
Kelso nodded. 'I offered him a share in the profits.'
A look of contempt spread across Mamantov's face. 'That you should seek to enrich yourself - that I'd expected: that was another reason I selected you. But that he should?' He shook his head in disgust. 'Human beings,' he murmured. 'They always let you down.'
'He might have felt the same about you,' said Kelso. 'Given what you did to him.'
Mamantov glanced at Viktor and something passed between the older man and the younger in that instant - a look of almost sexual intimacy - and Kelso knew at once that the pair of them had worked on Papu Rapava together. There must have been others but these two were at the centre of it:
the craftsman and his apprentice.
He felt himself beginning to sweat again.
'But he never told you where he'd hidden it,' he said.
Mamantov frowned, as if trying to remember something. 'No,' he said, softly. 'No. He came of strong stock. I'll grant him that. Not that it matters. We followed you and the girl the next morning, saw you collect the material. In the end, Rapava's death changed nothing. I have it all now.'
Silence.
The train had slowed almost to walking pace. Beyond the flat roofs, Kelso could see the mast of the Television Tower.
'Time presses,' said Mamantov suddenly, 'and the world is waiting.'
He picked up the satchel and his hat. 'I've given some thought to you,' he said to Kelso, as he stood and began
buttoning his coat. 'But really I can't see that you can harm us. You can withdraw your authentication of the papers, of course, but that won't make much difference now, except to make you look a fool - they're genuine: that will be established by independent experts in a day or two. You can also make certain wild allegations about the death of Papu Rapava, but no proof exists.' He bent to examine himself in the small mirror above Kelso's head, straightening the brim of his hat in readiness for the cameras. 'No. I think the best thing I can do is simply leave you to watch what happens next.
'Nothing's going to happen next,' said Kelso. 'Don't forget I've talked to this creature of yours - the moment he opens his mouth, people will laugh.'
'You want to bet on it?' Mamantov offered his hand. 'No? You're wise. Lenin said: "The most important thing in any endeavour is to get involved in the fight, and in that way learn what to do next." And that's what we're going to do now. For the first time in nearly ten years we re going to be able to start a fight. And such a fight. Viktor.'
Reluctantly, and with a final, wistful glance at Kelso, the young man got to his feet.
The corridor was crowded with figures in black leather jackets.
'It was love,' said
Kelso, when Mamantov was halfw
ay out of the door.
'What?' Mamantov turned to stare at him.
'Rapava. That was the reasotrI~ he didn't take me to the papers. You said he did it for the money, but I donk think he wanted the money for himself. He wanted it for his daughter. To make it up to her. It was love.'
'Love?' repeated Mamantov incredulously. He tested the
word in his mouth as if it was unfamiliar to him - the name of some sinister new weapon, perhaps, or a freshly discovered world capitalist-zionist conspiracy. 'Love?' No. It was no use. He shook his head and shrugged.
The door slid shut and Kelso collapsed back in his seat. A minute or two later he heard a noise like a high wind roaring through a forest and he pressed his face to the window. Up ahead, across an expanse of track, he could see a shifting mass of colour that gradually became more defined as they drew alongside the platform - faces, placards, waving flags, a podium, a red carpet, cameras, people waiting behind ropes, Zinaida -SHE spotted him at the same instant and for a few long
seconds their eyes locked. She saw him start to rise, mouthing something, gesturing at her, but then he was borne away and out of sight. The procession of dull green carriages, spattered with mud from the long journey, clanked slowly past then juddered to a halt, and the crowd, which had been festively noisy for the past half hour, was suddenly quiet.